The Morality of Necromancy

[Aegrus]

I doubt anyone cares about this, but it's been bothering me for a week. Pick up any fantasy book, movie, or game, and there's a very good chance that the antagonist is a necromancer. And more importantly, there are never any necromancer protagonists. Why?

The obvious answer- they resurrect corpses, and corpses are icky. (And sometimes hungry for flesh.) But from a logical standpoint, necromancy is not only affective (for obvious reasons- you can create an army of mindless slaves who don't need rights because they have no more intelligence than a flea), but also more moral than non-necromancy. How can the so-called heroes justify sending a live army to go murder some goblins when they could just ask their local necromancer to send a graveyard full of the undead to do it? If you send the living to fight when you could send the dead, are you not causelessly murdering live soldiers?

Maybe instead of questing to burn the friendly neighborhood necromancer at the stake, an army should put him on its payroll?

Why are necromancers always the bad guys?



Tee hee. . .love this picture.

[Kayenneh]

No necromancer protagonists? You're wrong and obviously you don't read enough crappy fantasy written for teenage girls.
Here's one with a necromancer as protagonist:

[kılıç_mehmet]

Necromancy isn't really the resurrection of corpses, or raising armies of undead.
In traditional occultic tradition it is generally understood with contacting the spirits from the Limbo or even afterlife. It generally deals with the unterwerfung and usage of these spirits, ghosts and other beings. In terms of folk tradition, this can also be applied to folk magicians who use familiars to do their spells.

[Polaris]

In my opinion, necromancy is an attempt to communicate with the dead.

[Darth]

It's never portrayed as a friendly relationship between the recently resurrected and the necromancer. Option a) it's a shambling, brainless husk/skeleton as intelligent as a rock, option b) The zombie/skeleton/ghoul/ghost has some-to-all of intelligence left and is forced to carry out orders for their master against its will, and is often in constant pain.

Also, it's the deceased's body, they almost always have no say. If the resurrected are volunteers then not much of a problem (though volunteers for the procedure are never portrayed as both sane and moral).

Also, it's fantasy, there is often an afterlife of sorts. If you're bringing things back rather than just animating dead tissue then a) you're bringing back someone who really shouldn't be brought back because their currently being tortured b) or you're bringing someone back from a paradise (or stopping them from ever arriving) and causing them anguish.

[kılıç_mehmet]

Resurrected, volunteers? You mean like people who have signed a death contract?
Dustmen and all